A Portrait in Poems: The Storied Life of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas

by Evie Robillard, Rachel Katstaller (Illustrator)

Overview

The stories, paintings and early twentieth-century Paris of Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, come to life in this charming and innovative picture book biography, told in clever second-person free verse.

Here’s an insider’s tour of the fascinating lives of Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, amusingly addressed directly to the reader (“The next time you go to Paris …”). It explores the couple’s art collection, their famous writer and artist friends and even their dog, Basket. It also describes how Gertrude’s book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was not about Alice, but was more about Gertrude herself! A celebration of creativity and the creative process, this original and very readable picture book biography champions two women who dared to live unconventional lives.

In playful free verse, author Evie Robillard offers a unique introduction to one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century art and literature. It includes twelve child-friendly quotations from Stein’s work, such as: “It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” Illustrator Rachel Katstaller’s fun yet detailed art delightfully evokes the time and place of the text. Touching on literature, history, writing and the visual arts, this biography offers loads of direct curriculum applications. Back matter includes a time line, “snapshots,” sources and an author’s note with further background.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781525300561
Publisher:	Kids Can Press
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	7.20(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	810L (what's this?)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Evie Robillard is a former children's librarian and writing teacher. She writes for both adults and children. She's the mother of two grown sons and makes her home in Madison, Wisconsin.

Editorial Reviews

…this delightful book presents [Stein and Toklas's] charmed life in Paris as a model of creativity, neatly captured by Katstaller's colored pencil sketches and Robillard's attention to the playful soundscapes in Stein's poetry.

The New York Times Book Review - Gregory Cowles

01/06/2020

The story begins in the middle: the middle of the Jardin du Luxembourg, at “an eight-sided pond/ where you can rent a tiny sailboat/ and set it adrift over and over again.” And in the middle of Stein’s adulthood, in the early 1900s at her home around the corner from the garden. Through eight short chapters, each marked with a Stein quote, Robillard elliptically traces the contours of Stein’s adulthood: the portrait of her that Picasso painted, her “word portraits” and long life beside Alice B. Toklas (“a tiny, dark-haired woman... Alice would ask you lots of questions/ in her quick, quiet voice”), and their eventual deaths. Robillard eventually asserts Stein’s genius—“Gertrude Stein was much, much more/ than a collector of paintings/ or a nibbler of tea cakes”—but Stein’s brilliance, as ever, is difficult to convey, though this introduction to the figure and her partner charms. Katstaller deploys gouache, colored pencil, and graphite in blues and greens, mustards and roses, to sketch art salons and garden idylls; supplemental materials add extra biographical detail and context. Ages 6–9. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

This accessible, kid-sized portrayal of Stein and Toklas' famous relationship is a charmer.—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

... this introduction to the figure and her partner charms.—Publishers Weekly

Together, the poems and the short pieces combine to tell a larger story about this influential literary figure.—Booklist

... this delightful book presents their charmed life in Paris as a model of creativity, neatly captured by Katstaller's colored pencil sketches and Robillard's attention to the playful soundscapes in Stein's poetry.—New York Times

... what emanates from these pages, through the chatty, accessible verse and the buoyant artwork, is a sense of the integrity that comes with a well-observed and well-lived life.—Wall Street Journal

A book that is rich in strong personalities and perspectives on art. Robillard details the life of Stein and Toklas in engaging and age-appropriate ways.—School Library Journal

The gouache and colored pencil illustrations flawlessly echo the tone of the poems that comprise the text—both playful and profound, rather like Stein and Toklas themselves.—Cooperative Children‘s Book Center

From the Publisher

05/08/2020

Gr 1–4—Robillard and Katstaller offer a lively introduction to modernism and the literary scene in 1920s Paris. The text presents a "storied life" of poet and novelist Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. The book begins with Stein's Left Bank residence at 27 Rue de Fleurus, where she and her brother Leo began their art collection, followed by a peek into the salon Stein and Toklas ran (including cultural and literary figures like Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway), and then highlights of Stein's writing career. The story of Picasso's painting of Stein is later revisited in Stein's "word portrait" of Picasso. Stein writes, "Would he like it would Napoleon/ would Napoleon would would he/ like it." Stein's poem could be interpreted as a puzzling portrait of Picasso; most readers would want to know how words about Napoleon represent Picasso. Readers can see how Stein's radical approach to capturing Picasso also opens up questions about power in their relationship. The book concludes with a time line, a bibliography, and an author's note reflecting on the survival of Stein's art collection through Nazi occupation during World War II. Katstaller's illustrations playfully reflect modernism in simple ways; in one scene, there is a high-angle perspective of the paintings hanging in Stein's salon in her Paris apartment, which depicted altered viewpoints. VERDICT A book that is rich in strong personalities and perspectives on art. Robillard details the life of Stein and Toklas in engaging and age-appropriate ways.—Marisa Januzzi, Northern Valley Regional H.S., NJ

School Library Journal

★ 2020-01-12
A warming look at two paragons of American modernism.

With spare, free-verse poems and whimsical, wonderfully upbeat illustrations, Robillard and Katstaller bring to young readers the enchanting story of American expats Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris. Robillard concentrates largely on Stein’s domestic life, describing how she and her brother Leo, then Alice, resided at 27 rue de Fleurus at the turn of the 20th century and famously collected paintings by Matisse, Cézanne, Gauguin, “the one and only Pablo Picasso,” and other masters, creating a salon for all kinds of visual and literary artists that would come to have a huge influence on modernism. Robillard writes: “Gertrude knew when a painting had something special to say. / Because she was Gertrude Stein. / Gertrude Stein, the genius.” While Robillard elides the romantic aspect of Stein’s relationship with “her partner, Alice”—and the fact that they were Jews living in World War II Paris—she takes great care to show how the intimacy of their partnership contributed to Stein’s mammoth literary output. Alongside Katstaller’s winningly childlike renderings of famous paintings and well-known portraits of Stein, Toklas, and their dog, Basket, Robillard includes quotes from Stein’s best-known works, offering a tantalizing introduction to her work while humanizing her ingenuity.

This accessible, kid-sized portrayal of Stein and Toklas’ famous relationship is a charmer. (timeline, sources, author’s note) (Picture book/biography/poetry. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews